Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures

Academic Excellence

CMLL Welcomes New Faculty

Dr. Belinda Kleinhans, Assistant Professor of German

Belinda Kleinhans comes to Texas Tech from the University of Manitoba Canada where
she taught German language and culture, film and gender studies. In her teaching and
research, she is usually working at the intersection of philosophy, literature and
other cultural artefacts within a post humanist and poststructuralist framework.

Originally from Germany, she has been living in North America in Canada since 2006.
She came to the University of Waterloo in Ontario (Canada) to complete a Masters in
German, and she has continued on and finished her Ph.D. in 2013. Her dissertation,
positioned in the area of Cultural and Literary Animal Studies, analyses the representation
of animals in German literature after 1945, seeking a deeper understanding of the
connection between language, representation and power. It analyzes how postwar German
writers negotiate anthropocentric and speciesist discourses via animal figures. Because
these writers disorient one's perception of reality via figures of the animal, i.e.
animals as both metaphors and as subjects, she develops what she would like to call
an "animal poetology" unique to them. At the core of this animal poetology lies the
question how animals in literary texts are constructed, how the authors negotiate
the ontological and epistemological status of animals, and how language can stop or
even disable the anthropological machine which produces the gap between humans and
animals.

Her current research can best be described in the category of critical theory and
cultural studies. The connection of power relationships within a speciesist framework
is a key interest of hers. The twentieth century has seen an unprecedented degree
of objectification and utilization of the animal; Derrida has even called it an "animal
genocide". The following ethical questions lie at the core of this "genocide" and
the treatment of animals: Who deserves the right to live, who is the "other" whom
I have to respect as a living being? Literature and art exemplarily unsettle the unquestioned
ethical dimensions of animal utilization and explore not only how language supports
power structures, but also how language can subvert and challenge them. The field
of literary animal studies can thus draw out alternative conceptions of species relations
which unsettle the humanistic faith in knowledge of animal life as ends in themselves.
By tracing moments of the open in other, also contemporary authors, I aim at developing
a way at inclusively looking at all others and developing an ethical understanding
of the other which is not exclusive to any creature.

In her free time, she likes to go for long walks or hikes, or travel to explore foreign
cultures. Not surprisingly for a literature professor, she likes to read, and is fond
of contemporary poetry and short stories.

Dr. Starra Priestaf, Assistant Professor of French

Starra Priestaf completed her PhD in French at Emory University where she specialized
in seventeenth-century French literature and culture. Her research and teaching interests
include early modern French studies, literary theory, medical humanities, and psychoanalysis.

Her dissertation, "Ruptures in Address: The Letter as Technical Device in the Works
of Guilleragues, Sévigné, and Lafayette," examines the letter in order to explore
both its effectiveness and failure as a communicative and transactional device. Focusing
on Guilleragues's Lettres portugaises (1669), Madame de Sévigné's Correspondance (1725),
and Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678), the letter discloses a fundamental
anxiety concerning the difficulty of transmitting and securing meaning, and validating
its mission as a medium for exchange. She argues that the stability and reliability
of the framework that the letter embodies as a means of communication and exchange
will be consistently tested and challenged, reflecting in turn the inability to secure
representation during the Classical period.

A forthcoming project entitled, "The Monstrous Feminine: Discourse and Dissimulation
in Early Modern French Fiction," examines the feminine practice of dissimulation as
a calculated performance which threatens to devastate sovereign authority and rule
in sixteenth and seventeenth century French theatre and literature (Marguerite de
Navarre, Madame de Lafayette, Corneille, and Racine). She is interested in female
characters who refuse to subscribe to hetero-normative modes of conduct which privilege
virtue, silence, and obedience.

In conjunction with her research, she is designing a course, "Deciphering Bodies:
Disability, Disease, and Monstrosity in Early Modern France," which explores early
modern constructions of disability and disease as belonging to the category of monstrous.
This course examines the works of François Rabelais, Michel de Montaigne, and Ambroise
Paré as they attempt to naturalize difference or at least to dispel the anxiety and
fear that traditionally accompany the appearance of disabled or diseased bodies.

Dr. Neil Anderson, Visiting Professor of Spanish

Neil Anderson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish for 2014-15, is a native of
Ann Arbor, Michigan. Anderson received his BA in Spanish from the University of Maine,
Orono, his MA in Spanish from Middlebury College, and his Ph.D. in Romance Languages
from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. During his studies at the University
of Maine, Anderson spent a year at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Galicia,
Spain, where he became interested in Galician language and culture. His dissertation,
"Microgeographies: Galician Narratives of Place (2004-2012), explored the ways in
which recent Galician-language narrative fiction represents individual and collective
experiences of place.

His current critical project focuses on how Galician culture is reimagining its relationship
to rural spaces. In this vein, he is preparing a book chapter on the poetics of emplacement
in María Reimóndez's En vías de extinción, and an article on post-rural "phantasmophilia"
in Xurxo Borrazás's Ser ou non.

In addition to his academic work, he is a translator of Galician-language poetry and
short fiction, with translations of works by Berta Dávila, María do Cebreiro, and
Xurxo Borrazás published or forthcoming.

Dr. Peter Miller, Visiting Professor of Classics

Peter Miller is beginning his first year as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics
in CMLL. Dr. Miller is British by birth, but grew up in the metropolitan Toronto area
in Canada. Before coming to TTU, he taught at Mount Allison University, a small college
in Eastern Canada, and at the University of Western Ontario (London, Canada), where
he also completed his PhD in Classics in 2014. Dr. Miller specializes in the literature
and culture of Archaic and Classical Greece, and his research particularly focuses
on ancient athletics, lyric poetry, and questions of gendered, socio-economic, and
ethnic identity. He is keen to demonstrate the interconnection of the ancient and
modern worlds, and has published on issues of gender identity in antiquity, and is
especially interested in the indebtedness of modern athletics to their ancient predecessors.

Dr. Miller enjoys talking to his students and others about the ancient world, and
when not in his office, can be found running around Lubbock; he is an avid long-distance
runner and has completed several marathons, although, he is quick to note, the marathon
was not, in actuality, an ancient sport!

Bachelor of Arts

The Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center at Texas Tech University
selected Dr. Diego Pascual y Cabo as a 2014-2015 Service-Learning Faculty Fellow.
As a result of his participation in this fellows program, Dr. Pascual will include
a service Learning component into the newly designed SPAN 3315 (Intermediate Conversation
for Bilingual Students) which will combine both in-classroom instruction with service
learning involvement. This will in turn create more opportunities to our heritage
language learners to (i) continue to increase their overall communicative proficiency
in Spanish, (ii) use Spanish in accurate, effective, and informed ways within a variety
of social and cultural contexts, (iii) gain a better understanding of the inherent
diversity and complexity of Hispanic culture(s) in the United States, and (iv) renew
contact with their cultural and linguistic heritage.

Dr. Carole Edward's Article One of the Editor's Top Ten Most Downloaded

Dr. Carole Edwards' article, "Réalité ou fiction? L'histoire à l'épreuve du postmodernisme"
published in the European Review of History Routledge-Revue europeenne d'histoire
, Volume 18, Issue 4, 2011, was one of the top ten most downloaded articles in the
first half of 2014 of editors.

Kristi Thrasher named "Outstanding Faculty by Student Disability Services" in January
2014

Edith Lozano-Pozos Receives Two Scholarships

Edith was the recipient of the Summer Dissertation Scholarship and of the American
Mexican Friendship-Waterman Scholarship. These scholarships will facilitate her ability
to complete her dissertation while pursuing her academic and career goals: to help
Latinos/as maintain their culture and language by spreading knowledge and understanding
of the rich Latin-American culture to the community at large through teaching, research
, and community involvement. "I look forward to the day I can help other students
achieve their dreams, just as you helped me. " Edith Lozano-Pozos

Ms. Lozano-Pozos presented a paper entitled, "Noir narrative: manifestation of vox
populi in Hispanoamérica" at the 47th SCOLAS Conference 2014 in San Diego, California
from March 27-29.

She presented a paper entitled, "Another Noir narrative: The Jesuit network into the
Cristero's War process "at the 2014 Latin American Studies Association in Chicago,
Illinois from May 27-29. The congress theme was Democracy and Memory.

Varona Lectures at the XXVII Semana Negra de Gijon

Rubén Varona, PhD Spanish candidate, participated as a special guest in the XXVII
Semana Negra de Gijon July 4-13 in Spain. In the framework of this prestigious literary
event devoted to the crime fiction genre, Varona presented his most recent novel titled,
El sastre de las sombras, La Pereza Ediciones (2013). During the conference, he and
several well-known Latin American authors were the panelists for "Latinoamérica se
escribe en negro", with several well-known authors from Latin America whom drew a
panorama of the genre in Hispanic countries through their experiences as writers and
scholars.

Castellanos Receives Fulbright Scholarship

Flor Castellanos, who graduated in December 2013 with a bachelor's degree in German
and serves as an international alumni specialist in the Office of International Affairs,
was accepted to Thailand to teach English to middle school or high school- aged children
for the academic year 2014-2015. Castellanos is one of about 1,800 U.S. citizens who
were selected to travel abroad through Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The program
offers fellowships for U. S. graduating college seniors, graduate students, young
professionals and artists to study abroad in more than 155 countries worldwide. Recipients
of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement
as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields.